 I Want to Give My Heart to Jesus #13:
At Time's End With Jesus
Larry Kirkpatrick ++ Mentone Church of Seventh-day Adventists ++ 17 November 2001
Now we have come to part thirteen of thirteen parts. This is the close of the series we began five months ago. Today we'll pull things together. But let us pull them all together within the compass of Scripture. Would you join me in turning to Ephesians 5:1-16? Let us read:
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
These verses, and the chapter just before them, speak to us of how the Christian shall behave in the light of his experience with Jesus. We, as those upon whom the end of the world have come (1 Corinthians 10:11), can only read them in the broader light that by heaven's choice now rests upon us. We are to be followers of God, like children. We are called to walk in love, to live our lives as Jesus lived His: sacrificially. We are here called to live within the context of moral boundaries outlined by God. "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints." Far from what some have said -- that how we live makes no difference in our Christian walk, there is a behavior that "becometh" saints; that is proper or right for those who are saints, hagios, the holy.
Rather than foolish talk, we are encouraged to an attitude of thankfulness. A church not far from here has a preacher who tells the congregation "you cannot be lost for sexual immorality." But consider Paul's words, and that he is speaking to the saints: "This ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them." The children of disobedience are those who insist upon dwelling on the other side of God's moral boundary. They disobey their Maker and Redeemer. They have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
The "dear children" are joined to the seed of the woman of Genesis three, Jesus Christ. John 1:12-13 reminds us that "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Those who wish to live as family members of the household of God live a different way. Before they were darkness. Notice that it does not say they were filled with darkness, but that they were darkness. They were not joined to Jesus but stood in darkness, even emanating darkness to their environment. But now something is very different. Now they are light in the Lord. Again, not that we are filled with light only, but our passage tells us that we ourselves, by the grace of God are light.
What a great and fundamental change must we have undergone by the power of the gospel! Do you consider yourself to be light? The command comes that since we are truly children of light now we are to live as children of light. Our passage says "walk as children of light," and there is a truth there that we must not pass by. Walking means active movement, active passage from somewhere to somewhere. God's children are not passively sitting or standing, they are actively walking. Their faith works. They are not stealth-quietists standing in the shadows with an eye to the sky watching for Jesus to come down with the heavenly bus.
Working faith produces something. "The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth; Proving [demonstrating by experiment] what is acceptable unto the Lord." If we truly have the Spirit we will have the fruit of the Spirit. And that fruit is not just written on a paper somewhere, but it is in "all goodness and righteousness and truth." That is what is to flow out into this darkened world through us, we who are now "light." And how can we prove what is acceptable to God unless we act on it, walk in it, live in it, become the third angel's message in human flesh?
But our passage continues. "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light." We are to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Those behaviors that flow out from wrong understandings of the gospel, wrong expectations about God's power to deliver or the necessity of departing from darkness and sin, from any gospel plan, no matter what it is called -- even if it be called a "grace orientation" -- are wrong. Nor are we asked to be silent in regard to them, but to "reprove them." Those who are holy will speak out against that which is unholy, and most especially in the house of God.
Reproving something doesn't make us holy. First we are called to remove the knife from our own eye before we conduct laser surgery on someone else's. If we still have darkness, then our reproving will be our own cutting instead of God's. Who here can cast the first stone? How careful we must be. Anyone can reprove, but God's children reprove redemptively. But Scripture cautions us to great discretion and care. How careful, how self-distrustful we must be, how wise we are to take heed lest we fall.
All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. If we are light, even our presence will reprove what is not light. Whatever makes manifest, saith the Scripture, is light. What of you and I? What of we who live at the end-time? Are we what makes manifest? Never on our own are we what makes manifest, but if we are in-filled by the Spirit of God, which only can happen when we completely obey Him, then we may make manifest. John 1:4, speaking of Jesus says, "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." And so the question is, do we have His life in us? Only then may we have His light, "the light of men" in us.
At this point our passage urges, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." We lack it. We must have it. Jesus has it. And like a resurrection happening in your life, the call comes to wake, stand to your feet, and receive from Jesus His light.
The last part of the counsel there comes in these lines: "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Our behavior should be different, buying-back the time, because the period in which we live bodes the end of all this pale godless tragedy lying in ruins around us on every side.
The denizens of this culture around us do not know or realize that their culture has reached its bankruptcy, their sins has reached unto heaven. And the clouds of doom are sizzling and swirling and forming-up and closing-up overhead, and the great final downpour of fire is looming. And they know it not. They know not the day of their visitation. But we know. We are children of light and not of darkness.
Speaking of the second coming of Jesus, Paul says, "But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober" (1 Thessalonians 5:1-6). We are not of the night nor of darkness. Faithful watching will save our own souls and those of others. So we are called to that.
Our Journey Through This Series
Our series has illumined many things. We began by reviewing what inspiration teaches about our fallen and broken human nature. We discovered that we are born broken, but not sinners -- according to the Bible. We found from Ellen White inspired wording describing our entry into this existence with this sobering line: "By nature we are alienated from God" (Steps to Christ, p. 43). We found her saying that "The heart of man is by nature cold and dark and unloving . . ." (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 21). In the Bible we found a most explicit text telling us that we are born "without strength" (Romans 5:6). But joy of joys, we found that God intervened in the fall and preserved to us our freedom to choose. Our nature was then broken-up and ruined, but even if we no longer retained strength to obey God, He gave us a gift so that still we might choose Him by partaking of His power.
We saw how Jesus took to Himself the same nature so that He might save us. He joined the human race as one of us, became kin of our kin, kind of our kind. Still He was God but He emptied Himself of His divine privileges and came down into the mire and lived as a man among men, giving us an example so that we too might overcome. He came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He became as human as we are, so that we could become as obedient as He is! He brought no special exemptions with Him to planet earth.
Next we worked through the Bible on its basic ideas of salvation, and discovered over and over again that salvation is presented as a wholistic process, more than mere legalities, incorporating real and present spiritual healing of broken and wounded people here and now. The evidences were piled high. We found that God gives no discount on morality, but gives a new heart to those who desire to obey. Even the desire to obey, we realized, comes from God. At the bottom line we bring nothing -- zippo -- to the salvation process. We have a part to act, necessary conditions to fulfill, but no merit do we bring, only to Jesus' cross do we cling. Our hands are empty until God Himself fills them.
We roared through history and found that after the close of the canon of Scripture the church early departed from the faith. Unnumbered miseries and doctrines and abominations and apostasies were perpetrated in her and by her until she herself was unclean. A great cleavage arose between the Christianity of the west and of the east. The west became overwrought with legal plans of salvation while in the east there was a focus on healing. That was the same focus we've found over and over through the pages of the Bible. In the west, the emphasis was on the judicial, in the east on healing; in the west, on Christianity as a state, in the east, on Christianity as a process; in the west, Jesus divinity was emphasized, in the east, His humanity; in the west everything looked backwards to the cross as legal payment, in the east, the viewpoint was forward to God's children's returning to oneness with Him, the experiential and the therapeutic.
We found that the Protestant Reformers come in two groupings, the Magisterials and the Radicals. Magisterials, while making progress in many areas still retained the basic legal-orientated philosophy of Rome, while the Radicals saw regeneration as a fundamental reality included in salvation. The Magisterials sought to reform the Catholic Church, the Radicals sought to restore the true church of the first century. In the Magisterials there was no problem with a mixture of church and state -- Constantine was a hero; but in the Radicals there was great revulsion to it -- Constantine was an agency of apostasy. These are two, mighty, mighty differences. We found that the Lutherans and the Reformed branch of Christianity trace back to the Magisterials, and that the Anabaptists, Baptists, and Mennonites trace back to the Radicals. We also discovered that our fundamental Adventist mindset is Radical Reformation.
We noticed that John Wesley, from whom arose the Methodists was used of God to re-introduce the healing emphasis of the east into the church of the west, and that this is fundamentally Adventist. We looked at a text on salvation in James that is almost never dealt with and saw that Abraham's being imputed righteous came at two different points some two decades apart (Genesis 15:6; James 2:23), that justification is not only a moment in time but also much more. Ellen G. White writes in Selected Messages, book 1, p. 397 that "It is by continual surrender of the will, by continual obedience, that the blessing of justification is retained." I am sure that James would agree!
We watched as the Advent movement arose because of a certain attitude about Scripture. We looked into, if but briefly, William Miller and his biblically derived "rules of interpretation." We noticed that in his day, when everyone was preaching a "temporal millennium" -- when their post-millenialist philosophy was that after they spent 1000 years fixing earth up, they would hand it off to Jesus -- we saw that when they were preaching this, William Miller and the Advent movement were called into being by God and told the world the opposite of that peace and safety message. We believed that as we partake of the same Bible principles and attitudes, those mighty days can and will come again.
We looked into the fact that God gave His end-time church a prophet, and that the writings of Mrs. Ellen G. White soundly agree with the gospel that is found in the Bible, the gospel that so many have missed because of their inadvertent fealty to false theological ideas about salvation, wherein people are never made right but always and only counted that way. We looked at a few of her insightful lines, and heard with wonder truths like these: "God's forgiveness is not merely a judicial act by which He sets us free from condemnation. It is not only forgiveness for sin, but reclaiming from sin" (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 114). "To be pardoned in the way that Christ pardons is not only to be forgiven, but to be renewed in the spirit of our mind" (Reflecting Christ, p. 303).
On faith and works we heard her loudly and clearly agreeing with Scripture: "Faith and works go together, believing and doing are blended . . ." (Selected Messages, book 1, p. 374). We looked at Steps to Christ, and saw Mrs. White asking, not the Magisterial Reformation question, "How can I be counted righteous?" but rather the Radical Reformation question, "How shall the sinner be made righteous?" (Steps to Christ, p. 23).
We looked closely at the angel messages of Revelation, all four of them. We looked at the history of our movement and how, by missing the crucial point of what the sanctuary was, they suffered great disappointment. We saw how the beginning of the Daniel 8:14 cleansing of the sanctuary fits right between the second and third angel messages; how two angel messages just precede each transition in Jesus' heavenly ministry. Just as our spiritual pioneers gave angel messages one and two before Jesus entered the heavenly most holy, we now live where we must give the third and fourth angel messages just before His exit from the most holy.
Eighteen-eighty-eight was a historical place in the experience of this movement where great truth was given and was largely, to our shame, rejected. The second coming of Jesus, we even understand, was delayed. Some among us have tried to make 1888 into a mystery because it was a message that brought to light the fullness of the gospel. Even today they are saying that this was where the church finally saw the truth of the forensic, legal-salvation only of the Magisterial Reformers, and that we should go back to that, and to original sin, and every false idea about the gospel there is, and discard all the other truth so richly granted to us as children of light. We looked at Scriptural examples like the Tax collector and the Pharisee who went up to the temple to pray, but only one man went home justified -- that is, not just counted right, but "made actually right" with God.
We looked into the past century and saw how there have been many changes and developments in the journey of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This body, which is to be the pillar and ground of the truth, has wobbled from time to time, and taken grave missteps. Several developments in the past century have had troubling impact on us. Chief among them was the highly regrettable and completely insidious publishing of the book Questions on Doctrine, by our church in 1957, which changed fundamentally many things. The nature of Christ and the nature of the gospel were grossly distorted, and all so that the fallen churches would not roast us over the fire of as a cult.
We saw even our own General Conference President warning us in 1978 that we were changing, that books of a new order were being introduced. He said, "Fellow leaders, beloved brethren and sisters -- don't let it happen! I appeal to you as earnestly as I know how this morning -- don't let it happen. I appeal to Andrews University, to the Seminary, to Loma Linda University -- don't let it happen! We are not Seventh-day Anglicans, not Seventh-day Lutherans -- we are Seventh-day Adventists!" He warned that we would be the generation who would face the last great apostasy.
We discussed briefly the Desmond Ford crisis. We saw how it was his determination to cling to the gospel as understood by the Magisterial Reformers that led him to find continual problems with the prophetic interpretations wrought out by the pioneers of this church. We even read lines from a recent interview with him in which he stated: "However, I must say that the most pleasing of all these quiet changes [made in the church in recent years] has been an increasing emphasis on justification, which is the legal metaphor of the gospel." We saw how these quiet changes are with us today, as the main publications of the church have been steering us backward to the limited forensic-only salvation of one part of the Reformation, and that even some Seventh-day Adventist conference churches are more and more freely writing their own independent statements of faith subscribing to these viewpoints, leaving out key doctrines such as the investigative judgment.
We saw how Ford had opposed the 1974 Review, "Righteousness by faith Special," and we reviewed the words of the varied authors in that issue. They were not wild-eyed radicals, but very responsible names, including George Vandeman, Don F. Neufeld, Charles E Bradford, H.M.S. Richards, Herbert Douglass, C. Mervyn Maxwell, Kenneth Wood, and Jonathan Butler. This was the faith in those days presented in our major publications! It could NOT be harmonized with the theology of Desmond Ford. How different things are in our main publications today!
We saw how the internet is changing the picture too; how God's people now have the capacity to teach the truth and bypass gate-keepers intent on revising the message and mission of the our beloved church. We understand that many within the church and in her leadership are entirely faithful, but we also look out across the Adventist horizon with lucid vision and awareness that illness is among us, and that we must exert ourselves in order to complete the work, and to be capable ourselves of living and giving the third angel's message at time's end.
At Time's End With Jesus
Now here we stand at time's end with Jesus. And utmost on our hearts and minds is that we would be in His will. Our Bible says "sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). Let us hear Ellen G. White in 1896 speaking to the working of this truth:
God does not use his grace to make his law of none effect, or to take the place of His law. . . God gave man a perfect law. An imperfect law would have perpetuated sin -- made God the author of sin. . . God's grace and the law of His kingdom are in perfect harmony; they walk hand in hand. His grace makes it possible for us to draw nigh to Him by faith. By receiving it, and letting it work in our lives, we testify to the validity of the law; we exalt the law and make it honorable by carrying out its living principles through the power of the grace of Christ; and by rendering pure, whole-hearted obedience to God's law, we witness before the universe of heaven, and before an apostate world that is making void the law of God, to the power of redemption.
'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.' Let no one try to carry his own sins, for they have been atoned for by the great sin-bearer. The only begotten Son of God voluntarily met the claims of God's violated law. He was stricken of God and afflicted in our behalf. One with the Father, He was fully able to bear the penalty of our disobedience. By connecting His divinity with our humanity, Christ has exalted the human family. His divinity grasps the throne of the Infinite in behalf of man. As our substitute, He took our sins upon himself, and now He intercedes before the Father in our behalf. (Review and Herald, September 15, 1896).
Those lines I just shared, are lines from an Ellen G. White article published in the Review in 1896. What is of interest is that when an excerpt from it was republished in Adventist Review, June 22, 2000, p. 13 and titled "By Grace Alone," all those lines were left out. Also of interest, nowhere in the article does she use the phrase that we are saved "by grace alone." Now I am not trying to sell you a conspiracy. Editors face real space limitations. Even if leaving out such select lines was not willful, could it have been subconscious? Could it have been that deep down those lines seemed unsettling, out of vogue with the current emphasis? Oh brethren and sisters, how we must study and pray. How we must plead for not only our own souls but every soul in the church, every leader and editor included.
Now let me give you another paragraph, surprising us, not even from our own church, and yet composed entirely of truth. Do you recall what I said about the eastern wing of Christianity? This traces out from that. Hear this definition of justification:
Justification is a word used in the Scriptures to mean that in Christ we are forgiven and actually made righteous in our living. Justification is not a once-for-all, instantaneous pronouncement guaranteeing eternal salvation, no matter how wickedly a person may live from that point on. Neither is it merely a legal declaration that an unrighteous person is righteous. Rather, justification is a living, dynamic, day-to-day reality for the one who follows Christ. The Christian actively pursues a righteous life in the grace and power of God granted to all who are believing Him. (http://www.geocities.com/evangelical_orthodox/justification.html).
That comes from the internet, and from someone who probably knows nothing about the Sabbath or Seventh-day Adventism. It is little less than the 1888 message. But it is an expression that we as a church should be presenting today.
Why aren't we?
We've walked through 2000 years of history, and we've been lucid about developments, even distasteful ones, even within our own denomination. And I pray our eyes are opened, not for us to grow bitter or distrustful, but to become careful and wise. We must never leave our post. Insofar as we can, we must live and give the third angel's message, and we ought to do it from within the structure of our own denomination. That's what it is here for. But we will only be successful if we retain and strengthen our connection with Jesus. How can we give our hearts more fully to Jesus now than ever before?
Giving My Heart to Jesus in the Light
Let's turn back to the third chapter of John. Let us consider John 3:18-21:
He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
The deciding line in the whole issue of giving ourselves to Jesus is whether we believe in Him. We are not talking here about the trembling-devils belief, intellectual assent only. This is a belief with deeds in it. If we really believe in Jesus, we will not be condemned because we have a living, working belief; an empowering relation to Jesus. Our high Priest is in the heavenly sanctuary and He is desirous of completing the atonement. The atonement is no mere heavenly legality. A completed atonement will mean a healed people. Real at-one-ment between man and God means, so very plainly, people, not only counted but made right with Him.
We must link to Jesus and receive His power. He is our great high Priest in the heavenly sanctuary, making all of heaven's biddings enablings to His children. One who refuses to believe in Him lacks access to His power. He cannot obey. Lacking ability to obey, He fails and disobeys, and is condemned. He has the option of receiving Christ, but won't exercise it. See, men are condemned because they love darkness rather than light, and their love of evil is not just random; it is because what they actually do is evil. expression strengthens impression, whether it is verbal or by actual hands-on. The more we do evil, the more we will love doing evil. The more we do what is right, the more we will love doing what is right. And so we must link to Jesus and receive His power.
"He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." Do you want to come to the light?
Our spiritual neighbors in other faiths have emphasized salvation as a moment in time, as "getting saved." That viewpoint is almost always a very narrow and legal idea. Our series and our exploration of the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy writings has shown us the deeper dynamic of working faith, of spiritual healing and the therapeutic emphasis. Obviously, this broader view cannot limit us to a moment in time only.
But every journey, as they say, begins with one step. Every decision to give our heart to Jesus also begins with just one step, just one choice on our part. God works behind the scenes. That numbed nature in us that is only "cold and dark and unloving" is brought to pliability, to life-potential, to a capacity to choose the good, through the ministrations of God Himself. Whether we have never, truly, followed, or whether we have followed our Lord always but not always at the close range we've meant to, either way, who can say they've attained? Who can say they can't get closer? Who can say they have not more of their heart to give to Jesus?
What do we give Jesus? Our brokenness. And we are broken in every way; our intellect is undependable, our emotions so easily mislead. Our faculty of faith needs continual exercise to grow and have healthfulness. Our will needs to be exercised in God's direction. We need to give Him all of us, for we are broken through and through; we need healing, through and through.
Fortunately, our Jesus is a Savior, through and through. To save us, He became one of us. To heal us, He took our stripes and our infirmities both. He paid the highest price.
And He did that, for you.
At the end of the salvific day, when all is said and done, the Bible says that Jesus will see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. When He sees you in the kingdom, He'll be satisfied that the high price He paid -- for you -- was in fact what He wanted. You see, He wants you. He wants me. And the question remains with us: Knowing what we know, about ourselves, about Him, about His end-time movement and the bumpy journey through the intensifying rapids of river end-time, will we give Him our heart and move to closure?
God is a moral being, loving righteousness. His purpose in creating us was to bring into being a people who would share eternity with Him, happy and holy. We were designed to love righteousness. Thus heaven makes its appeal today:
What do you want to be? Do you want to belong to Jesus? Do you want to be holy? Do you want to love and be loved, or hate and be hated? Do you want all that there is to get out of this life now, and all that there is in the life yet to come, or will you live your fallen preferences and take the moment like an animal? Put another way, will you rebel in the positive, or in the negative?
Jesus is calling us all. Some, to return; some, to go deeper; some, to begin for the first time, that walk into eternity at His side. Whichever may apply to you, do weigh the request of God, while we sing our closing hymn. After, we will pray. Heaven's door is open, let all who would, enter in, and take journey to the heart of God . . .
Conclusion
Let us pray: Father in heaven, you have heard all that we've spoken these past months I believe You've indited all that been spoken. You've laid out the map before us, and we've seen many things. Now we pray Lord, take us; use us. Show us now the pathway ourselves and how to bring others along into Thy kingdom. Grant us the power of Your grace that we might be victorious over our besetments, and effective in winning others into Your army. Make us warriors. Link us to Jesus. Grant us that He might be our personal Savior, healing us on the pathway. Grant O Lord that Mentone Church will increase as Your lighthouse, that against our tendencies we would permit past things to be past things, and go forward in the blaze of Your brightness and mercy. Make effectual what we have learned. Help us to be undiscouraged but lucid. Make us swift to love, and swifter still to obey. Make us now Your dear children, and bring us swiftly on Your way, forever to serve Thee. For we ask it, in Jesus' name. Amen.
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